Business property leases

Our business leases integrate the draftsman's 20-years of experience of letting commercial property with a comprehensive legal framework that provides excellent protection for the landlord and a wide range of options to suit almost all requirements. All the templates include the provisions you would expect as standard, such as one for a guarantor, and each comes with full guidance notes that explain your options.

Introduction

In a lease, the business of the tenant is less important than the type of property being let. So our agreements differ with each other through the inclusion or exclusion of terms relating to features of the building, such as those dealing with rights to display signs, rather than by who the tenant may be.

Choose the right agreement by selecting the one whose description most closely matches that of your premises.

The law in these documents

These agreements create leases as defined in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (which has since been updated many times). Account has also been taken of:

the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995

the Regulatory Reform Regulations 2003

the Joint Committee's Code for Leasing Business Premises

(where relevant) the RICS' Code on Service Charges

In balancing the codes with the law and the interest of the Landlord, we have followed the codes where reasonable, but have preferred the interest of the Landlord where there may be a difference.

Traditionally, it is the landlord who puts his draft to his proposed tenant. He is the owner of the land, so he can decide the terms on which he will let it. Statute law redresses this imbalance of power, but our leases been drawn to prefer the interest of the landlord rather than the tenant.

Terms included in every document

A lease contains many terms. We mention here only those few about which you are most likely to be concerned. If you want more precise information as to the contents of a particular document, please ask us.

We provide the words to include or exclude terms relating to the following in every lease:

guarantor provision

transfer or assignment to another party

sub-letting forbidden

inclusion of a break clause for premature termination by the tenant

options for rent reviews

opt-out of Sections 24-28 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. These sections provide a device whereby a landlord can be sure of getting his premises back when the term expires.

an extensive menu of tenants' covenants to protect every aspect of the landlord's interest

These are full agreements, drawn to a higher standard than most solicitors would provide. Despite the breadth of options we provide, editing is straightforward, regardless of whether you have prior experience or not of this type of legal agreement.

We provide extensive drafting notes explaining each paragraph, and we send you a guide on how to deal generally with editing and completion.

We also sell a second version of most leases, for professional property developers, solicitors and surveyors. Each contains some additional paragraphs covering more technical points, such as a draft authorised guarantee agreement and a draft agreement for a security deposit.

Registration

Unless otherwise stated, every lease is for a term for any period up to and including seven years. Provided the term is seven years or less, it does not need to be registered at the Land Registry.

Leases over seven years must be registered and stamp duty land tax will apply.

Why choose Net Lawman

Immediate delivery of the document template by e-mail after checkout

DocX file format compatible with all popular PC & Mac word processing
software. We can convert into other formats for you

Use of plain English makes our documents easy to edit and understand

Detailed guidance notes explain the purpose of each paragraph and how to
edit

Review service available - a Net Lawman lawyer can check your edited
document